HST on the Vincent Black Shadow

Writer and gonzo journalist Dr. Hunter S. Thompson has long been a connoisseur of fine
machinery, especially the Vincent Black Shadow. Here are some passages from
his work that discuss the Vincent. Generally the good doctor
is referring to the Egli Vincent, which was released about the time these
books were written.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream (1970)

"Well," he said, "as your attorney I advise you to buy a motorcycle.
How else can you cover a thing like this righteously?"

"No way," I said. "Where can we get hold of a Vincent Black Shadow?"

"Whats that?"

"A fantastic bike," I said. "The new model is something like
two thousand cubic inches, developing two hundred brake-horsepower
at four thousand revolutions per minute on a magnesium frame
with two styrofoam seats and a total curb weight of exactly two hundred
pounds."

"That sounds about right for this gig," he said.

"It is," I assured him. "The fucker's not much for turning, but it's
pure hell on the straightaway. It'll outrun the F-111 until takeoff."

"Takeoff?" he said. "Can we handle that much torque?"

"Absolutely," I said. "I'll call New York for some cash."

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[At the entry desk for the Mint 400]

"What's the entry fee?" I asked the desk-man.

"Two fifty," he said.

"What if I told you I had a Vincent Black Shadow?"

He stared up at me, saying nothing, not friendly. I noticed he was wearing
a .38 revolver on his belt. "Forget it," I said. "My driver's sick
anyway."

His eyes narrowed. "Your driver ain't the only one sick around here, buddy."

"He has a bone in his throat," I said.

"What?"

The man was getting ugly, but suddenly his eyes switched away. He was staring at
something else . . .

"What's the trouble here?" he croaked. "This man is my client. Are you prepared
to go to court?"

I grabbed his shoulder and gently spun him around. "Never mind," I said.
"It's the Black Shadow -- they won't accept it."

"Wait a minute!" he shouted. "What do you mean, they won't
accept it? Have you made a deal with these pigs?"

"Certainly not," I said, pushing him along toward the gate. "But you notice
they're all armed. We're the only people here without guns. Can't you hear
that shooting over there?"

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Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 (1973)

After Miami the calendar shows a bit of rest on the
political front -- but not for me: I have to come back out to California
and ride that goddamn fiendish Vincent Black Shadow again, for the road
tests. The original plan was to deal with the beast in my off-hours
during the California primary coverage, but serious problems developed.

Ten days before the election -- with McGovern apparently so far
ahead that most of the press people were looking for ways to avoid
covering the final week -- I drove out to Ventura, a satellite town
just north of L.A. in the San Fernando Valley, to pick up the bugger
and use it to cover the rest of the primary. Greg Jackson, an ABC
correspondent who used to race motorcycles, went along with me.
We were both curious about this machine. Chris Bunche, editor of
Choppers magazine, said it was so fast and terrible that
it made the extremely fast Honda 750 seem like a harmless toy.

This proved to be absolutely true. I rode a factory-demo Honda
for a while, just to get the feel of being back on a serious
road-runner again . . . and it seemed just fine: very quick,
very powerful, very easy in the hands, one-touch electric starter.
A very civilized machine, in all, and I might even be tempted to
buy one if I didn't have the same gut distaste for Hondas that
the American Honda management has for Rolling Stone.
They don't like the image. "You meet the nicest people on a
Honda," they say -- but according to a letter from American
Honda to the Rolling Stone ad manager, none of these nicest people
have much stomach for a magazine like the Stone.

Which is probably just as well; because if you're a safe,
happy, nice, young Republican you probably don't want
to read about things like dope, rock music and politics anyway.
You want to stick with Time, and for weekend recreation
do a bit of the laid-back street-cruising on your big fast Honda 750. . .
maybe burn a Sportster or a Triumph here or there, just for the fun of it:
But nothing serious, because when you start that kind of thing you
don't meet many nice people.

Jesus! Another tangent, and right up front, this time --
the whole lead, in fact, completely fucked.

-------------------------

But first things first. We were talking about motorcycles.
Jackson and I were out there in Ventura fucking around with a
750 Honda and an experimental prototype of the new Vincent --
a 1000-cc brute that proved to be so awesomely fast that I didn't
even have time to get scared of it before I found myself coming up
on a highway stoplight at ninety miles an hour and then skidding
halfway through the intersection with both wheel-brakes locked.

A genuinely hellish bike. Second gear peaks around 65 --
cruising speed on the freeways -- and third winds out somewhere
between 95 and 100. I never got to fourth, which takes you up to
120 or so -- and after that you shift into fifth.

Top speed is 140, more or less, depending on how the thing is
tuned -- but there is nowhere in Los Angeles County to run a bike
like that. I managed to get it back from Ventura to McGovern's
downtown headquarters hotel, staying mainly in second gear, but
the vibration almost fused my wrist bones and boiling oil from
the breather pipes turned my right foot completely black. Later,
when I tried to start it up for another test-run, the backlash
from the kick-starter almost broke my leg. For two days afterward
I limped around with a golfball-sized blood-bruise in my right arch.

Later in the week I tried the bastard again, but it stalled on
a ramp leading up to the Hollywood Freeway and I almost broke my
hand when I exploded in a stupid, screaming rage and punched the
gas tank. After that I locked it up and left it in the hotel
parking lot -- where it sat for many days with a MCGOVERN FOR PRESIDENT
tag on the handlebars.

George never mentioned it, and when I suggested to Gary Hart
that the Senator might like to take the machine out for a quick
test-ride and some photos for the national press, I got almost
exactly the same reaction that Mankiewicz laid on me in Florida
when I suggested that McGovern could pick up a million or so
votes by inviting the wire-service photographers to come out and
snap him lounging around on the beach with a can of beer in his
hand and wearing my Grateful Dead T-shirt.

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Song of the Sausage Creature (Cycle World magazine, March 1995)

Of course. You want to cripple the bastard? Send him a 130-mph
café racer. And include some license plates, so he'll think it's a
streetbike. He's queer for anything fast.

Which is true. I have been a connoisseur of fast motorcycles all my
life. I bought a brand-new 650 BSA Lightning when it was billed as "the
fastest motorcycle ever tested by Hot Rod magazine." I have ridden a
500-pound Vincent through traffic on the Ventura Freeway with burning
oil on my legs and run the Kawa 750 triple through Beverly Hills at night
with a head full of acid.... I have ridden with Sonny Barger and smoked
weed in biker bars with Jack Nicholson, Grace Slick, Ron Zigler, and
my infamous old friend, Ken Kesey, a legendary Café Racer.

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Or maybe not: The Ducati 900 is so finely engineered and
balanced and torqued that you can do 90 mph in fifth through a
35-mph zone and get away with it. The bike is not just fast -- it is
extremely quick and responsive, and it will do amazing things....
It is a little like riding the original Vincent Black Shadow, which would
outrun an F-86 jet fighter on the takeoff runway, but at the end, the
F-86 would go airborne and the Vincent would not, and there was
no point in trying to turn it. WHAMO! The Sausage Creature strikes
again.

There is a fundamental difference, however, between the old
Vincents and the new bred of superbikes. If you rode the Black
Shadow at top speed for any length of time, you would almost
certainly die. That is why there are not many life members of the
Vincent Black Shadow Society. The Vincent was like a bullet that
went straight; the Ducati is like the magic bullet that went sideways
and hit JFK and the Governor of Texas at the same time. It was
impossible. But so was my terrifying sideways leap across railroad
tracks on the 900SP. The bike did it easily with the grace of a
fleeing tomcat. The landing was so easy I remember thinking,
goddamnit, if I had screwed it on a little more I could have gone
a lot further.

Maybe this is the new Café Racer macho. My bike is so much
faster than yours that I dare you to ride it, you lame little turd. Do you
have the balls to ride this BOTTOMLESS PIT OF TORQUE?

That is the attitude of the New Age superbike freak, and I am one
of them. On some days they are about the most fun you can have
with your clothes on. The Vincent just killed you a lot faster than
a superbike will. A fool couldn't ride the Vincent Black Shadow
more than once, but a fool can ride a Ducati 900 many times, and
it will always be bloodcurdling kind of fun. That is the Curse of Speed
which has plagued me all my life. I am a slave to it. On my tombstone
they will carve, "IT NEVER GOT FAST ENOUGH FOR ME."